


yellow poppies

by johnyongclub



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Art, Dreams, Dreamscapes, Dreamsharing, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Inspired by Pygmalion and Galatea (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), M/M, Sculpture, johnyongfest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:33:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25771417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnyongclub/pseuds/johnyongclub
Summary: Johnny dreams with his hands, molding colors into a world that lacks it.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 13
Kudos: 45
Collections: johnyong fest round 1





	yellow poppies

**Author's Note:**

> the prompt i took up goes like this; _Pygmalion and Galatea au. Johnny is an artist of your choice who normally doesn’t care for love and sex, but creates a man so beautiful, he falls in love with him. He secretly wishes for a companion that looks just like his masterpiece. One day, he finally has it._
> 
> truthfully, i don't think i did any justice on this amazing, amazing prompt and im sorry to the prompter if it doesn't reach your expectations. i might have not included all your do's either so i apologize!!
> 
> i do not have a beta and i've read this over too many times for it to make sense so i'm hoping for the best aksjdj. thank you for the prompt! i had fun with this even though i think i might have botched it. if the ending seems a little rushed, it's because i would have made it too sad if i continued. anyways! this was fun, thank you.

"You have to attend the ball, John," Mr. Isaac is saying as he helps Johnny out of his coat, promptly hanging it onto the coat rack and proceeding to take Johnny's scarf from the young male. 

His face is stern in the way that Johnny knows his mind could not be changed and even though Mr. Isaac is an employee, having been the family's butler for years, Johnny has always listened to the older man. He had grown up mainly under the man's care, after all, since his parents had been too busy building an empire.

Once it was built, and while their excuse had always been that they're providing their only son with a good life, they became too busy upholding the empire they built to spare any time for him. It's ironic, how they claimed to work for his benefit yet never cared enough to know how he is, aside from the occasional C’s he used to get back in school. Their punishments were never pretty. Johnny always made sure he passed. 

Isaac is kind and gentle but strict when he has to be. A man nearing his sixties, his face is adorned in wrinkles but he has the kindest eyes. He rarely smiles but he is kind. He was the one who had taught Johnny how to fish, how to swim, how to play baseball. he wasn't educated enough to help Johnny in his academic lessons but Johnny would always remember how Isaac had stayed up way past three in the morning to make sure Johnny went to bed safe. Isaac, in general, has always been more of a father than his actual father would ever be.

"It's not like I have a choice, do I?" He asks with a sigh but manages to hold a smile because Isaac doesn't deserve to be at the receiving end of his resentment towards his family. As he starts up the stairs, Johnny pauses and turns to speak to the aging man. "Will you let Madam Liliana know I won't be down for dinner?"

Isaac smiles, nodding once and Johnny returns it with a gentle curl of his lips before he goes up and into his room. The house is always more empty than not. Besides himself, Isaac and Madam Liliana, the housekeeper, there is almost no one else. All the other helpers don't live in the mansion and his parents are never home. If he had the choice, Johnny is certain he would have moved somewhere else.

He's expected to take over the company, however, so his fate is sealed. Johnny is stuck.

With a sigh, he locks the door to his room and heads straight into his art studio, a room his parents had allowed him to link to his bedroom so he could store his art supplies. It's the one luxury he's asked for and granted with. Most times, he hides right here.

Art, Johnny grew to learn, is healing. He paints when he's overcome with emotions he doesn't know how to control or manage. He draws when he's upset and unhappy with his mom and dad, when they miss his birthdays and try to make it up by having Isaac bring him to a theme park, back when birthdays had meant something to him as a child.

Closing the door behind him, Johnny looks around the studio and inhales the familiar scent of acrylic paints and clay. He'd started practicing sculpting a few years ago and in the middle of his studio sits a project he'd started a month or two back. He hadn't exactly known what would come out of it but he'd already sculpted a pair of legs for a start. 

Struck by a sudden wave of motivation, Johnny rolls up his sleeves and grabs the apron he hangs behind the door to put it on. He should probably change into home clothes but he doesn't care enough to, simply taking a seat on the stool he'd placed in front of his project and never moved it since he started. For a moment, Johnny merely stares at the graying clay, overcome with realization that he might need to scrap this entirely.

So he does; he stashes it aside and covers it with a cloth, refusing to be reminded of his failure. He places a board as the base and spends another fifteen minutes just staring at its smooth surface, motivation gone. 

In the end, Johnny gives up with a sigh. He gets off the stool and looks around the studio, filled with years and years of painting practice, of different styles he'd experimented with before realizing that his true potential lies within romanticism. Somewhere in the corner of the room lay piles of canvases of almost the same scene. A man, his wealth and nothing else.

Johnny decided to stash them away once realization sat heavy on his shoulders that he'd been painting himself. That was when he picked up sculpting.

There is no ounce of motivation now, however, so Johnny takes off his apron and hangs it back behind the door. He takes a shower and changes into new clothes. By the time he sits down on his bed, he hears Madam Liliana's voice calling for the other servants to have their dinner and he knows the laughter she lets out after must be Isaac's doing. 

He smiles, fond over the thought that there is life down there, despite their lack of luxury. He glances once at the door to his private studio, waits for something to come; a motivation, his drive, a sense of life. Nothing.

He gets off the bed and leaves the room, pads down the stairs and walks the distance to the dining room. It's empty there because the servants don't enjoy their meals on their employer's costly dining sets so Johnny figures they would be eating behind the house, just outside the kitchen. Sure enough, through the window he sees a group of them, laughing and sharing jokes.

When he opens the door, every one of them stops talking and Johnny couldn't help but release a soft, nervous laugh. "Please don't stop on my account,"

"Johnny dear!" Madam Liliana comes forward then, still in the apron he has never seen her without, a kind smile on her face. "Mr. Isaac said you won't be down for dinner so we didn't prepare the table for you. Please, give us a few minutes and it'll be ready."

"Oh, no, no, no. please," Johnny stops her, "I was actually thinking if it's okay that I join all of you? I hate sitting alone, you know that, Lily."

At his confession, the group of servants explodes into a cheer and all of them gesture for him to join all at once. He smiles as Madam Liliana calls for someone to get more plates, more food. People start moving but Isaac is the one that pulls Johnny to sit beside him on the table. It's lively once again as they fall back into conversations. It isn't the first time that Johnny's joined them for meals; he used to go there a lot more often when he was a boy, but it has been a while since. 

Still, it makes him feel at home, for once. Like they're family and not workers his parents paid to take care of the house they barely come home to. The servants, helpers, include Johnny in the conversations and one of them even introduces her son, a boy about a few years younger than himself and one she calls Ten.

The boy smiles at him, gingerly and somewhat awkwardly but Johnny doesn't blame him; it's not often that they get to enjoy a simple meal with someone of Johnny's status and Johnny hates that but he thinks with this group of people, it could change. 

"I'm glad you came down to join us, John," Isaac says when Johnny's finally free from conversations with the others. "It clears your head, being here. I’m glad."

Johnny smiles again and he nods. He's glad, too.

  
  


* * *

  
  


_ “Are you happy?” _

Am I happy? Johnny finds himself wondering. It’s dark and quiet and when he tries to blink, it feels like opening his eyes as his vision is swarmed with colors and light. He takes a moment to wonder where he is because he couldn’t recognize the ceiling until he realizes that it isn’t the ceiling but the sky. He sits up then, finally taking in his surrounding and recognizing a field instead of his own bedroom. He is laying on the ground, surrounded by yellow poppies. And he isn’t alone.

“Are you happy, Johnny?” The voice comes again and Johnny turns his head to find a boy sitting next to him, head tilted up to look at the sky. 

It isn’t someone he knows, clearly, because Johnny remembers faces and he doesn’t remember this one. His silence must have taken too long because the stranger turns his head and meets his gaze, a pair of warm honey eyes finding his. The boy is smiling, soft and gentle, carrying a vibrancy almost as bright as the poppies around them. 

“Who are you?” Johnny asks, his voice barely audible, a frown etched upon his forehead. “Where are we?”

The stranger sighs, raising a hand to let his finger brush over delicate flower petals. “The questions won’t make this experience fun, you know? Lay down with me. Watch the clouds with me.”

“But I don’t even know you,” Johnny presses on yet somehow something keeps him seated upon the ground, transfixed. 

“We don’t need to know each other to appreciate the world, do we?” The boy asks back. 

Johnny frowns. He wants to ask again but his mouth closes and he lays back down, eyes back up at the sky. It’s blue, like the ocean, and it moves, like the waves. For a moment, he wonders if he was beneath the waters. The stranger lays next to him, his breathing soft and a little too close. Johnny feels floaty, enough to know that this must be a dream. The realization calms down his beating heart and somehow he knows he would wake up from this so he worries less. 

“Where is this place?” He asks quietly, afraid that if he spoke louder, it would upset nature.

He feels the stranger’s head turn to look at him but he doesn’t mirror the movement, keeping his eyes up at the blue expanse above. The boy hums, “I think we are inside your heart. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Our minds couldn’t be this pretty.”

Johnny hums. He continues to watch the moving sky, a plain canvas painted blue and in that moment, he feels like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. There is just him, in between the ground and the sky, and there is a boy whose name he doesn’t even know. He turns his head then, lips parted to ask a question but the stranger had disappeared. He sits up, looking around to find the boy but all he finds is an endless stretch of yellow poppies and nothing else.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The one problem to solve when it comes to attending the ball is that Johnny couldn't think of anyone to bring with. He has close to zero female friends who don't, in some way, think that his friendliness means he's trying to court them. It isn’t that he isn’t interested in them, but Johnny just doesn’t find any appeal in building a relationship with anyone if he doesn’t feel ready. The last thing he would want is to be involved with someone and not feel happy, like he knows his parents aren’t happy in their marriage. If they were, he would have seen more of them growing up. 

“You worry too much, John,” Jeong Jaehyun, a friend of Johnny’s he’d known since he was a mere boy of ten, says with a clap to his shoulder. He’s clad in a nice suit, as he always is, being a professor at a local school teaching Languages, mainly the English language and though it might not be much, Johnny knows Jaehyun takes pride in his profession. 

In a small town like this, the people hold his position above many others. Not a lot of them could go to school when they were younger and because he had graduated and became a teacher, everyone just assumes Jaehyun comes with wealth. They aren’t wrong. Johnny doesn’t like the idea but even he couldn’t deny the fact that it was easier to be friends with someone of the same status, seeing as those who aren’t as privileged weren’t allowed to play with him. He thinks it’s funny that his parents are never around to show him they care yet there were always there whenever he used to sneak out to play catching with Yuta. After some time, it was just easier to  _ not  _ meet Yuta; that way Yuta would never get in trouble because of him.

He watches now as Jaehyun fixes his necktie, flashing Johnny a smile. He was always smug so whatever he says next, Johnny already knows he wouldn’t like. “We have many family friends, do we not? Your parent always wanted you to court Irene. Maybe it’s about time you do just that.”

“Did you hear anything I’ve just told you, Jae? I don’t want to court anyone.”

Jaehyun nods, “I heard you, loud and clear. I didn’t say you’d have to court her forever. If you get bored, find someone new. It’s not as complicated as you’re making it seem, John. Now, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you at the ball.”

With another clap to his shoulder, Jaehyun buttons up his suit before walking off, leaving Johnny alone at the café to mull over his own thoughts. It’s clear Jaehyun isn’t someone he could go to when it comes to this because, like his parents, Jaehyun cares about his status, about his wealth and the big house and the women that would fall upon his feet. Johnny isn’t like that. 

He sighs then, finishing the cup of coffee he’d ordered for himself before leaving a tip for the staff that had served them well. Unlike Jaehyun, Johnny is made to wait until his father deems him ready to take over the company. Until then, all Johnny has now is time. 

Instead of thinking about who he could possibly bring to the ball, Johnny worked on his art. He’s had the same dreams of a face, of lingering hands and kissable lips, of a soothing voice that sings him to sleep, similar to the one that had visited him the night he spent dinner with Isaac and the rest of house workers. A slumber within slumber. Johnny thinks he would go insane if he doesn’t project it into his art, as a form of therapy. Somehow seeing his hands work on the sculpture makes him feel less delirious, knowing he had been productive and using his talent well makes him feel less… lonely.

It’s sad. It’s truly sad. 

It was calming, the voice. Johnny knows he’d never heard of it before or he would have remembered who it had belonged to. The face he saw was fleeting, like a flash of pretty features that came and went in a blink of an eye. He’d forgotten how the stranger looked like exactly so the brief dreams are the only ones to remind him it wasn’t just some dream. Some of them were vague, but mostly, they felt almost too real to be just dreams. Johnny isn’t spiritual, not in the least, but to disregard those visions that came to him in his sleep feels almost ignorant. He just couldn’t find any way to do anything about them.

Sculpting was the closest thing to a closure, he feels. So when he had woken up one morning after the nights of dreaming the same voice, the same face, the same warm touch, Johnny skipped breakfast and sat in his studio, exhausting his hands and memory to bring the dream spirit into life. If anything, however, it made him question just how much skill he has in this field, because when he was done, after carefully shaping the features with loose reference to his memories of the dreams, the sculpted head looked nothing like the boy who’d come to visit him at night.

He had worked on it for  _ weeks _ so when the end result was nowhere close to how he had pictured it, Johnny couldn’t help feeling disappointed. 

When he gets home, the house is empty again save for Isaac, who greeted him and Madam Liliana, heard from the kitchen. He assumes she must already be preparing dinner. Apparently his parents had invited a few people over to celebrate the new land they’d bought and planned to transform into an office. He dreads the part where he would have to sit at the table and pretend he’s passionate about business matters and running the company when all he cares about is creating art into life, even if it means he wouldn’t be making too much money.

Upstairs in his studio, he stares at the sculpture he had worked on, a head made of clay, looking into unseeing eyes and lifeless gray skin and he thinks about the boy in his dream. A hand of his comes up to run the pad of his thumb over the hard surface of stone cheek, so delicate even though it isn’t flesh, so close to an entire being that only existed within his dreams. He feels a sort of longing weighing heavy on his chest, like missing someone he hasn’t seen for a very long time. 

With a sigh, he puts on his apron and dips his hands in the water, intending to perfect his work. He works gently, swiping thumb over cheek, over softening lips, careful not to touch the scar he hadn’t forgotten to include since the night he had seen it on the boy’s cheek in his sleep. It goes just at the outer corner of the male’s right eye, above his cheekbone, shaped like a rose. His eyes are catlike, wide and sparkling, like they were holding stars instead of pupils. Johnny remembers these small details the most, like his eyes and his scar and the way his lips curl in the softest, most gentle way when he smiles at Johnny.

The sculpted head, however, looks nothing like him.

Still, Johnny works on it with care, afraid to break it, afraid to ruin it. 

“Why have you come to me in my dreams?” He finds himself asking whilst using the water to soften the clay that makes up the nose of the sculpted head, trying to get it to look exactly as the one he tries to remember. “What is it that you want from me?”

The same unseeing, blank eyes look back at him and he stares long enough to realize how insane it is of him to be speaking to a statue. Even then, even though it looks nothing like his dreams, Johnny couldn’t help but find a resemblance. This is art, he thinks. This is art he had based on someone who he had never met and it would always remind him of  _ him _ .

  
  


* * *

  
  


“I mean, sure, I have had dreams of strangers,” Ten is saying as he grabs a handful of seeds to feed the chicken, dressed in a simple t-shirt and pants and boots to protect his feet. They had become friends over the week when Johnny noticed Ten would spend most of his time at the farm behind the house, taking care of the animals there mostly. Sometimes he would help Madam Liliana in the kitchen. And though they had  _ just _ become friends, Johnny feels like he could trust the boy. Ten continues, “But I don’t remember them vividly. They’re always different. One time I met a boy with purple hair and he made me laugh a lot, but I don’t remember his face. Why, John? Have you been having these dreams?”

The rational answer would be to tell Ten that no, he hasn’t. It would be a lie but the lie would help keep his name clear amongst the workers. As much as he trusts Ten wouldn’t be telling this to anyone, he isn’t certain how much of this friendship means to the farm boy. Still, not saying anything about it is driving him insane. “Would you think I’m crazy if I said yes?”

Ten turns to look at him then, smiling. “No, silly. Listen, my mother always taught me the different meanings to dreams. It was like, my bedtime story growing up. Every time I get a dream, I would try hard to remember it so I could tell her when I see her.”

“Do you know what this means then?”

“Well,” Ten purses his lips, throwing another handful of seeds to the chicken. “I don’t know how true it is but some people claimed that if we see the same person in the dream, and they aren’t someone we already know, then that could mean something is going to happen for you.”

Johnny frowns. “Bad things?”

Ten shrugs his shoulders, the corners of his mouth downturned. “Not necessarily. It could be bad, it could be good. Could be both too, so I heard. But again, you should take this with a grain of salt, John. Maybe you’re just, I don’t know, lonely?”

“Seriously?” Johnny stares at Ten, who laughs and pats at his shoulder.

“You are, though, aren’t you?” Ten raises a brow. “It’s not a bad thing and it’s not your fault. Maybe you should stay out of that studio for a while and meet with friends. It would be good for you.”

Johnny grimaces, kicking at a stone on the ground before his eyes look over to the chickens enjoying their meals. “I don’t know. My friends don’t make me happy like art does.”

“I know that,” Ten claims, setting aside the bucket containing the seeds and picking up the rake he’d set aside earlier. “But your friends are people and your art is not. I’m not saying you should stop making art. I haven’t seen your work but Isaac tells me you’re really good. I’m just saying that being alone can make you… think stuff, you know? And they’re not always good things.”

Sighing, Johnny nods. He knows Ten makes a valid point and this is one of the reasons he actually prefers talking to him more than any of his friends. Ten always considers his well-being, his feelings without thinking he’s being ridiculous. And he knows that thinking of  _ dreams  _ isn’t good for him so maybe he should really listen to his friend, the only one he could count on anyway.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The dreams stopped coming. Most of the time, Johnny’s sleep is dreamless, void and dark and silent. It came to a point that he would miss the voices, the songs and the melodic laughter. It sounds insane but Johnny goes to bed at night wishing those dreams would return. It would always, always be better than laying in oblivion for hours until his mind wakes up.

The ball would be held in less than a month and Johnny hasn’t been making any attempts to bring anyone as his partner. His parents had made it clear that it is mandatory, to uphold the family name and promise the people that the Seo family would live long and healthy and all the responsibilities had clearly fallen into Johnny’s hands, being the only child.

The pressure had been too much, so much that Johnny forgets Ten’s advice and avoided any human contact for days and days, speaking only to Isaac and only because the old man comes up to his room to make sure he has something to eat. He locks himself up within his room and spends more time in the studio than anywhere else. Within that safe space, Johnny continues to sculpt. First came the neck and then the chest, the arms and torso, the legs and his feet, until he was complete, a life size male statue standing a head shorter than Johnny himself, in the middle of his studio.

He steps back now to admire the complete work, awed by just how real the statue looks, standing right there, surrounded by the poppies Johnny had made Madam Liliana pick for him. He wipes his dirty hands on his apron, smiling at the face of molded clay that had come to look more and more like the stranger in his dream, if he remembered correctly. 

He had sculpted before, nothing as complex and as big as this human size sculpture, but he had. Each time he had done well, Johnny would be overcome with the feeling of accomplishment, productive in the sense that he did use his talent well, that he did not waste his parents’ money when they agreed to let him pursue art instead of business. This time, however, it feels different.

“Who are you?” He wonders aloud, coming close to brush the back of his hand over the stone cheek. For a fleeting moment, Johnny wishes the statue would speak to him. Upon realizing how ridiculous that sounds, he laughs, wiping his hands once again over the front of his apron before he continues to stare at the completed sculpture. 

Johnny isn’t one to brag. He’d never been conceited and sometimes he could even be too demeaning to himself, especially when it comes to his art pieces, but this statue stands at full glory, radiating such beauty he had never seen in anyone before. So beautiful that Johnny thinks it could not have been his handiwork alone. He wonders if the dream boy had anything to do with it.

An hour passes without him realizing, seated on his stool and polishing the stone sculpture until it was ready. He finds himself wishing for impossible things; for the dreams to return, for these cold hands made of clay to turn into flesh, for those gray, unseeing eyes to blink and sparkle like the stars. He wishes he could hear the stranger’s voice again. He wishes he could kiss him. 

It dawns on him, almost alarmingly so, that nothing is stopping him from kissing the statue, that it is the closest he could get to kiss the boy since he wouldn’t be able to control his dreams and his actions within them. He stands then, almost too abruptly that the stool fell over but he doesn’t bother letting it sit upright. He lets his digits caress the smooth stone surface, heart beating fast against his chest and then he threw away all his worries and leans down to brush his lips over the statue’s.

It doesn’t feel like anything, surprisingly. He doesn’t feel weird or insane or sad or happy. Johnny kisses it once and then one more time and he’s filled with a screaming urgency to bring the boy to life only to grow frustrated to know that it was impossible. 

He only realizes that these feelings within his chest could only mean one thing, if anything his female friends had spoken about when it comes to falling in love is anywhere close to the truth. 

Johnny is in love and he’s in love with a stone sculpture of a boy that doesn’t exist.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The night of the ball comes around sooner than Johnny would like. He had given up in finding anyone to bring with, upset that he had allowed himself to develop feelings for something unreal, for someone who he had spoken to once, in a dream. And by the time his tuxedo was ready for him to wear to the ball, Johnny decides he doesn’t really care if his parents are upset that he did not bring a woman by his arm. For once, Johnny lets himself go numb. It was easier. 

Securing the cuffs of his sleeves, Johnny looks over at his reflection through the mirror to see if he’s decent enough to leave the house. The tuxedo is tailored specially for him so it sits nicely upon his shoulders, enhancing the proportions of his body in a way that makes him look presentable. He keeps his hair slicked back, leaving only a few stray strands over his forehead and he’s about to head out the door when he hears a loud crash coming from the studio. 

Alarmed, his legs bring him to the door of the studio in quick strides. His hand curls around the knob but he hesitates to turn it. He hasn’t gone to see the statue ever since the night he had kissed it, having thrown a cloth over the sculpture to cover it before he left the room and never stepped in again. At least until tonight. He swallows and slowly turns the knob. 

It isn’t hard to spot, seeing as he last left it in the middle of the room. Except instead of standing, all Johnny finds is the same white cloth he’d used to cover it over a rubble of stones, broken into pieces. 

“Fuck,” He cusses, rushing over to pull the cloth off the mess that once was his masterpiece. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. God, what the fuck?” 

He glances over to the window to see if he had left it opened even though the possibility of the statue getting knocked over by the mere wind was thin. He dared to think that someone had broken in and accidentally knocked it over but the windows are closed and there is no way anyone could have had the time to close them even if they did manage to jump out. He crouches down over the pieces, picking up a stray piece and staring at it as if it could bring it back together. There’s a weight on his chest, the kind of pain Johnny doesn’t think he’d ever felt before, not even when his father had torn apart his first painting, all those years ago.

“John?” Isaac’s voice is faint, drifting through the space of his bedroom and into the studio. “It’s time to leave. The car is ready for you. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” He calls out just loud enough for Isaac to hear him, letting the piece of stone drop from his hand as he straightens up. He leaves the studio without another glance back, flashing a smile at the butler. “Let’s go, Isaac.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Jaehyun is one of the best dressed at the ball, Johnny notices as soon as he steps into the ballroom, engulfed within the violin and piano music dancing through the large space. When his parents spot him without a partner, Johnny could see his mother’s face fall and his father’s harden. He clenches his jaw and steers away from the pair, dipping his head and greeting familiar faces with the briefest smile. He could recognize almost everyone here, though he fails to remember names.

The great thing about extravagant parties like this is that it’s easy to lose sight of people he wants to avoid. Whilst Jaehyun dances with  _ some  _ of his female friends, Johnny finds himself enjoying the varying finger foods prepared for them as well as the champagne. He feels somewhat heartbroken, thinking of the effort he’d put into sculpting his dream boy and having it fallen over and destroyed. In a way, it feels too close to having lost a loved one and the thought scares him. The idea of him being in love with a  _ statue _ sounded so absurd that it haunts him at night, when he sleeps and it’s nightmares that visit him instead of dreams. 

“I hope you’re enjoying the delicacies, Mr. Seo,” A female voice is heard above the classical music that’s being played, loud enough to have him turning his head. When he does, he finds Irene smiling at him, speaking again. “It pleases me to see you came to the ball. I heard you were considering not to.”

Johnny quirks a single brow up in question. He wonders where she had heard it from, seeing as he hadn’t told anyone but Isaac and maybe Jaehyun, who must have assumed his reluctance when they were speaking about who to bring to the ball. He clears his throat then, dampening it with a sip of his champagne. “I’m glad to see you too, Irene.”

Irene’s smile widens, cheeks tinged with a dust of pink. “Mr. Isaac tells me you’ve been working hard on a new art project. If it isn’t too personal, may I ask how is it coming along?”

Isaac, of course. He’d always liked Irene. Johnny hums, pursing his lips. “Well, I completed it about a week or two ago but if you’re asking to see it then I’d suggest you forget it, Irene.”

“Oh,” Irene murmurs, her face falling.

“I meant that, well,” Johnny adds quickly, clearing his throat. “It was destroyed just earlier. Must have fallen, or something.”

“Oh dear,” Irene frowns, looking genuinely concerned and it makes Johnny feel bad that he’d always tried to avoid her. “I’m so sorry to hear that, John. You must be heartbroken.”

He softens at this, because it’s true. His heart did break, though for probably a different reason than Irene would think. “Yeah, well, it happens, I suppose. I just need to step back for a little while and not let it discourage me.”

Irene smiles again, a little daring now as she reaches over to gently touch his forearm. “You are so admirable, John. I’ve always liked that about you. Listen, would you – ”

Johnny hears her but he already knows where she’s going with her question and no matter how bad he feels for avoiding her, Johnny remembers  _ why _ he had avoided her and it is simply because he had never been interested. Irene is nice and beautiful, the kind of a girl a man would take for a wife. Johnny just isn’t the man. 

As she speaks, he lets his gaze linger around the ballroom, looking for no one in particular. That is, until he catches sight of a familiar face fleeting through the crowd dancing to the music. He frowns, blinking to make sure he was awake and isn’t dreaming. It’s impossible. He had only ever seen him in his dreams and never beyond his sleep. How could it be?

With a gentle touch to Irene’s elbow, Johnny excuses himself after placing down his glass of champagne, hoping to catch up with the person he’d seen so he doesn’t lose him in the crowd. He moves quickly, snaking through bodies and apologizing softly, all whilst he keeps his eyes open for the boy he’d first met in his dream. 

Still, no matter how fast his feet takes him, Johnny loses sight of the male anyway. 

He cusses low under his breath, annoyed that he couldn’t even do this one thing right. His hand goes up to loosen his tie, giving himself room to breathe but his eyes don’t stop scanning the area, determined to find the boy and certain that he wasn’t just seeing things. He moves amongst the crowd, looking at faces and hoping to find a familiar one. It feels like hours had passed when it could have been only minutes and by the time Johnny stops to catch his breath, he feels defeated.

Frustration builds within his chest over his failure to find the boy. That and the possibility that he was imagining him in his wake. Instead of feeling the pain of knowing he could never find the dream boy, Johnny is just angry. Angry that he could let a non-existent boy drive him to this length of insanity, angry that the boy is playing with his conscious mind. 

“Looking for me?”

Johnny startles with a jump, turning around to find the voice and going speechless when he sees the very person he was looking for. 

There, standing under the light of the chandelier, in flesh and bone and hair and sparkling eyes, his sculpture came to life. Johnny’s mouth parts to speak but he couldn’t find the words to say. Instead he eyes the boy, from the strands of his soft black hair and smooth skin, his honey eyes and pink lips, stretched into the smile he had seen so many times in his dreams. But it couldn’t be, could it? He isn’t asleep, he is awake. There must be some kind of coincidence. He must be just someone who happens to look like the boy who’d visited him in his sleep multiple times.

His gaze goes to look over his right eye and sure enough, right at the outer corner of his eyes, sits the rose-shaped scar, the smallest detail Johnny remembers most. He’s not dressed like the rest of the guests, which led Johnny to wonder why it was hard to find him earlier. Instead of wearing a suit or a tuxedo like every other male here in the ballroom, the stranger from his dreams is wearing a loose white dress shirt made of silk, his hair ruffled up the way he’d made sure his sculpture had when he was making it. 

“I’m… Who are you?” Johnny asks finally, frowning as he steps a little closer. 

The boy’s smile widens, “Who do you want me to be?” At Johnny’s obvious look of confusion, he laughs, stepping close enough that he could lean up and whisper right against the shell of Johnny’s ear. 

“I am your dream, Johnny. And I’m here now. I came for you.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Johnny knows lost, in the sense of direction or emotions, like when he was nine and he’d dared himself to walk to school except he couldn’t exactly remember the route by foot and he’d spent hours on the road looking for home until Isaac found him. Or when he’d felt lost, leaving high school and pressured to pursue business when all he wants to do is make art. 

The kind of lost he feels now is nowhere close to what he’d felt before. He’s confused and certain that if he gives himself a pinch, he’d wake up from this dream. After what the stranger from his dream had told him, Johnny was quick to pull him away to a more secluded area, where the chances of his parents finding him are slim. He’d sat the boy down while he remained standing.

“Do you have a name?” He asks, breaking the silence.

The boy shrugs his shoulders. “Do you have a name for me?”

Johnny blinks. “No, I – ”

“Does that mean I can choose my name? If you let me, I think I really like Taeyong.”

“Taeyong?”

“Yes?”

“Is that your name then?”

_ Taeyong _ nods his head, blinking up at him. “I like it so yes, that is my name.”

“Right, okay,” Johnny rubs a hand over his face, pacing the floor in front of the previously stone boy. “Uh, what did you mean when you said you’re my dream?”

The boy’s lower lip juts out into a tiny pout, his eyes look even bigger now. “Are you saying you’ve forgotten the day we first met? I can’t say I’m not hurt, Johnny.”

Johnny’s frown deepens as he stops pacing, letting out a nervous laugh. “We met?”

This makes Taeyong get up onto his feet, looking hurt. “In the dream? Don’t you remember? You brought me to a beautiful poppy field and everywhere is yellow and the sky is blue and it moved. Will you take me there again someday?”

The words aren’t  _ alien _ to Johnny but as far as he’d known, that was just a random dream and there is no way that the boy he had seen in it is real, even if he did spend most of his time making him with his hands. “But that’s not possible… It was a dream and I’ve never met you before that. Who are you exactly?”

Taeyong sighs, stepping even closer to Johnny and to his surprise, his arms wind around Johnny’s midriff, resting his head upon his shoulder. Johnny panics but he couldn’t find it in himself to push the boy away. “Your mind is beautiful, Johnny. But it is so lonely, so quiet. It doesn’t matter how pretty it is, I wanted to get out.”

Johnny pulls away then, his hands held out to stop Taeyong from coming any closer. Everything he’d said just sounded insane to Johnny. It doesn’t make any sense. “I don’t know who you are or where you come from and this isn’t normal. Can anyone else see you? Am I speaking to myself?”

The boy inhales softly, his eyes, once bright and lively, are darker and maybe a little sad. His lips purse and he nods to himself before he speaks again. “I understand this is all confusing, and I would help you if I could, Johnny. But all I know is what I’ve seen in your mind. Why do you think I’m here at the ball when I don’t even know who these people are, when I don’t even know how to dance or how to dress nice? I’m here because you’re here.”

Taking a moment to even out his breathing and clear out his thoughts, Johnny exhales loudly, glancing over at the boy a little warily. The more he looks at him, the more he looks like the stone figure he had sculpted with his bare hands and Johnny could try to deny it but no one else had known that dream of the moving sky and yellow poppies because the only ones who were in it were himself and this boy he’s looking at, the boy who claims to be his creation. 

And he’s beautiful, Johnny thinks. Just like he’d thought the statue was beautiful. So beautiful it’s almost inhuman. Like the night he had kissed those stone lips, Johnny feels his heart beating loud and clear against his chest.

“I’m sorry,” He finds himself saying, sighing softly. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. It’s just… I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how you could be real. I’ve only ever seen you in my dreams.”

Taeyong smiles then, softer now. “You made me real the night you completed that stone version of me, Johnny. And you brought me to life when you kissed me.”

Like the girls he’d seen Jaehyun kissed in the past, Taeyong’s cheeks are dusted a light pink, an indication that he’s actually blushing, looking almost shy. It makes Johnny smile, just a little. “I’m sorry I kissed you without asking.”

The boy laughs, shaking his head. “I couldn’t have answered even if you did.”

Johnny mirrors his laugh, feeling ridiculous but also at the same time nice, like he’d found what he’d thought he lost. He looks at Taeyong a little fondly, reminded of all the good feelings he’s felt every time he dreams of him. “I’m sorry anyway.”

“Don’t be,” Taeyong says, smiling prettily. “I really wanted you to.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Ten’s first reaction when Johnny told him about Taeyong was to laugh. He’d stared at Johnny for a second before he threw his head back and laughed. Ten’s reaction when Johnny brought him up to his room where he’d, well,  _ kept _ Taeyong for the time being, was to let his jaw drop as he stared. To sum it all up, Ten freaked out maybe just a little bit. 

“You’re expecting me to believe  _ he  _ is the dream boy you’ve been seeing in your sleep?” Ten asks, not bothering to pull Johnny aside and speaking right in front of Taeyong, who sits there quietly, watching them. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

Johnny blinks. “Wait,  _ no _ ,” He looks between the two of them, clearing his throat and only then realizing what a big mistake this could be. “I just think that you would understand. You’re the only person I’ve ever told about even having these dreams.”

The farmer’s son is silent for a moment, looking over at Taeyong as if to study him. “Do you even know how you sound, Johnny? This sounds insane. What do you want with Johnny? Taeyong, is it?”

Taeyong nods his head, seeming to have missed the accusing tone Ten had used. “That is me. You must be Ten, right? Johnny has very nice thoughts of you. He thinks you’re very nice and kind.”

Ten’s lips part but Johnny could already see the shift in his stance, softening just a little bit. “Really?”

“Oh, yes,” Taeyong nods again, smiling at Johnny. “I know a lot of his thoughts.”

It’s Johnny’s turn to clear his throat, still not very used to Taeyong speaking this way and feeling like his privacy had been breached without his consent, though he couldn’t really blame Taeyong. “Well, I just needed someone I could talk to about this. I know I could trust you, Ten. You won’t breathe a word of this, will you?”

Ten sighs. “I won’t but you can’t keep here forever. Doesn’t he need to, like, eat? Or something? People in the house are bound to find out and what will you say then?”

“I know, I know,” Johnny groans, pacing again. “I just don’t know what to tell them. What do I even say? That he’s a friend? And he’s here to stay for, I don’t know, forever?”

Before Ten could say anything, Taeyong butts in. “I don’t remember being just your friend, Johnny.”

Ten’s eyes widen then, in that teasing way Johnny knows he wouldn’t hear the end of. “Oh, boy.”

“Oh, god,” Johnny sits himself on the edge of his bed, next to Taeyong, dropping down on his back with his hands over his face. “Help me, Ten. Please?”

When there is only silence, Johnny uncovers his face and sits up, looking up at Ten, who glances over at Taeyong. Taeyong is staring down at the floor and when he speaks, his voice is sad. “Do you want me to go, Johnny?”

“No,” Johnny says quickly, shaking his head. “No, no, no. That’s not what I mean, Taeyong.”

“Listen,” Ten interrupts. “You figure this out and if you need anything, you know where to find me, John.”

Taeyong watches as Ten walks out of the room, closing the door with a soft click. Johnny sighs, feeling like he’s fucked up in a way and all he knows is that he  _ doesn’t _ want Taeyong to be roaming around a strange town if he truly doesn’t know anything. 

“I’m sorry,” He says then, his voice loud even though he speaks quietly. “I just– Everything is not making any sense. What am I to you? What exactly do you see me as? Because I don’t remember anything, Taeyong.”

A soft sigh leaves Taeyong’s soft pink lips and he looks up to meet Johnny’s eyes. “You’re making things complicated, Johnny. You dreamed of me and you made me with your hands and now that I am here in the flesh, you don’t want me?”

Johnny gazes at Taeyong, into his lively eyes and feels guilt in his chest for making Taeyong feel that way. What exactly is stopping him from embracing the reality of it? He remembers very vaguely standing in his studio and wishing the statue he’d sculpted was real. And now he is, right here in front of him.

“I just,” Johnny runs a hand down his face. “I just need to remember what you remember. I can’t do this with nothing to base on because I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know how this is happening, I don’t know what you mean when you said I made you. And I certainly don’t know what kind of relationship we have.”

Taeyong smiles, a little sad but he reaches over to touch Johnny’s hand. “Bring me back to that poppy field. I’ll tell you everything.”

There was no guarantee that sleeping would mean he would be taking Taeyong back to that magical field but that night he sleeps and Taeyong doesn’t but he sees him in his dream again. 

Taeyong smiles at him and he smiles a lot and when his soft, delicate fingers touch Johnny’s cheek, Johnny remembers. He remembers the warm touches and the kissable lips and those soft eyes and he knows he’d always remembered them as fleeting and dreamlike but now he remembers experiencing them with Taeyong. And he knows when he wakes up it will still feel crazy but he would know Taeyong in a different way then and that, Johnny thinks, is okay.

He doesn’t have to make it complicated. He would just have to take what’s already there.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They don’t immediately jump back into the intimacy they share in his dreams. When awake, Johnny finds it’s harder for him to be comfortable when it comes to physical affection and he quickly blames this on the fact that he isn’t used to it growing up. Still, Taeyong is kind about it and they don’t speak of being physical. He decides, right after waking up from that dream where Taeyong made him remember, that he wants to learn about Taeyong as a person.

The challenge, truly, lays on the fact that Taeyong isn’t a person of his own. Johnny couldn’t ask him what he likes because he doesn’t know what to like so when he was asked, Taeyong would say he likes whatever it is that Johnny does. He eats anything that Madam Liliana makes and he spends time with Ten at the farm, playing with the horses and the cows and feeding the chickens their seeds. It’s endearing, somehow, and more often than not, Johnny finds himself smiling when watching Taeyong.

He decides after a couple of weeks since Taeyong first appeared to him in person, that it wouldn’t hurt to teach Taeyong things he thinks the boy would like. He starts with painting, something he had grown up learning. 

“But what do I do with this?” Taeyong asks when Johnny sits him down in his studio with an easel in front of him and an empty canvas, an array of colors laid out for him to choose. “I can’t make pretty things like you, Johnny.”

Johnny laughs, sitting on his own stool facing Taeyong, his canvas laid out for him as well. “It doesn’t have to look like mine, Taeyong. There is no wrong or right in art, whatever you make, only you would understand it.”

Taeyong purses his lips then and Johnny takes his silence as agreement, so he takes his brush and starts on his canvas. After a moment, Taeyong speaks again. “I think you make sad pictures. They’re all so different from the ones I see in your head.”

“Yeah?” Johnny hums, a little used to how Taeyong speaks now and how everything he had seen comes from within Johnny’s head. “Sometimes I wonder if you really came from my mind instead of someone else’s.”

The other boy is quiet as they paint. Johnny could hear Taeyong’s brush swipe over his canvas so he knows that Taeyong had started too. His own is starting to look dark, like every other painting he has ever finished. Taeyong’s words make him think it through but Johnny, when he goes into this space where he focuses on colors, subconsciously dips his brush into browns and blacks and dark shades instead of lighter ones. The canvases are relatively small, just so he doesn’t overwhelm Taeyong. It doesn’t take too long for him to deem his piece good enough and by the time Taeyong is done, his is already dry.

“Let’s show each other our canvas on three?” He suggests.

Taeyong’s cheeks are a little pink when he nods his head. “I don’t really like mine.”

“I’m sure it’s as pretty as you are, love,” He smiles to reassure him, holding up his canvas. “Three, two, one.”

They both turn their works to each other and Johnny finds a spread of colors, yellows and reds and greens and blues on Taeyong’s canvas, a stark contrast when compared to his own. The colors make up a field unlike the one they usually meet each other at in his dreams and when he looks at his canvas, Johnny could find the similarity.

They’d painted the same scenery, only with different colors.

Taeyong hums. “That is what I meant. You see this place as a place of sadness but when I was in there, Johnny, all I see are colors.”

“Huh.”

“It’s true,” Taeyong continues, getting off his stool to go over to the finished paintings Johnny kept against the wall, half covered by a cloth. He touches one at the front, of a man in an empty room. “This is the same room I’ve seen before but there was light and there were flowers on the nightstand and a picture of a happy family on the wall. Your bed sheets were sky blue and your windows were open and oh, Johnny, the breeze… The breeze was calming. Where is that?”

Johnny clenches his jaw, unable to find the answer to his question. Instead he lets Taeyong pick up another painting, one of a gloomy street on a rainy day. 

“Do you want to know about this one?” Taeyong asks.

“Tell me.”

“Well,” Taeyong smiles, letting the painting rest against the wall and he squats down to level with it. “The streets I walked on was very alive. There were kids playing and couples sharing a cup of coffee over by the side, in a small, cozy café. They sell pretty flowers in this shop, here, where it’s closed and abandoned. They were alive, the flowers. And they moved with the wind.”

Johnny pictures it, a smile etched upon his lips. He gets off his stool and walks over to the paintings, picking out a random one. He takes a look at it, remembering the night he’d stayed up painting, for hours and hours, unleashing the pain that had been in his company for as long as he could remember. It’s nothing but a darkness, of a large empty house and an endless oblivion surrounding it. His heart feels heavy just at the memory. “What about this one?”

Taeyong rises to his feet, his eyes scanning over the painting and he’s quiet for a long time so Johnny waits. When Taeyong’s gaze lifts to meet his, his eyes are glistening with unshed tears, ones that fall down his cheeks and Johnny panics, stepping close to raise a hand that he cups over Taeyong’s cheek. “What’s wrong, Taeyong?”

The boy shakes his head, taking the painting from Johnny’s hands and Johnny watches as Taeyong allows the pads of his fingers to caress over the house, one that is eerily similar to the one they are in. “This is your home, isn’t it? I avoid it, when I was in your mind and in your dreams. It’s the one place I couldn’t go to. I hate feeling sad and I feel sad every time I pass by.”

Johnny pulls back a little, looking down at the painting. “It’s that bad, huh?”

Taeyong shrugs, sniffling and raising his hand to wipe at his cheeks. “Everything I’ve touched turned into color, or at least I thought. Those place I told you about, they already had their yellows and all those pretty colors and then I realized they grow brighter when I touch them. But this place… When I first saw it, it was dark and empty and I thought to myself, why not step into the house? Maybe I’d make it color, make it happier, so whenever you come into your dreams and stumble upon it, you wouldn’t feel so sad.”

“I don’t have to sleep to find this place,” Johnny says quietly, placing the painting down but keeping a smile on his lips because he had long grown numb to the pain of how lonely home feels. 

The boy tilts his head questioningly but it doesn’t take him long to realize what Johnny meant. He looks around the studio and Johnny imagines he’s seeing exactly what Johnny is seeing and there’s a deep realization that he doesn’t want Taeyong to feel what he feels. He would never wish it upon his biggest enemy.

Taeyong, bright and young and clueless Taeyong, smiles when their gazes meet. “You should have your dreams made into real life, Johnny. Your hands are magic and you made me, didn’t you? You can make your life. You can bring the colors. For as long as you continue to use these shades then that’s how long your life would be dark.”

Speechless, Johnny thinks of what Taeyong had just said. He had never thought of it that way, of how much he could do with his hands, not when his hands look calloused and rough and tired from creating things that don’t make sense. He looks over at Taeyong now and wonders just what all of this could possibly mean. Why had he come into his life? What was his purpose?

Why did he create him?

_ ‘Maybe you’re just, I don’t know, lonely?’ _

Ten had said that before, Johnny remembers. It’s sad and borderline offensive in a way, but it’s true. Johnny is lonely and the void in his head must have created a version of Taeyong without him even noticing. Now he is here, in flesh, as real as the next person. He bleeds and he cries and he gets sad and he gets happy. He’s almost as human as Johnny is. 

All Johnny would have to do is welcome him as he would anyone else, despite the fact that they first met in a dream, where they are surrounded with colors and not the monochrome of black and white he lives in.

Perhaps Taeyong is right, he thinks. Perhaps he could bring those colors out of his sleeping mind and into his life.

Perhaps Taeyong is the first yellow to taint his blacks.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Slowly, but surely, Johnny finds himself spending more and more time outside the confines of his studio. Taeyong makes him bring his canvases outside to the garden and every afternoon, they would paint. Sometimes Taeyong paints a single red rose and Johnny finishes it off with a garden of roses. He tells Taeyong they remind him of Taeyong and the boy had blushed a dark shade of pink. The moment was fleeting and Johnny thinks he should have kissed Taeyong, but the time just wasn’t right.

Eventually, Johnny starts to avoid his studio unless it’s to grab his supplies or keep them. It isn’t with any negative emotions but he’d realized how much more liberated he feels when he’s outside under the sun, with Taeyong laughing and enjoying the wonders of life Johnny had never truly appreciated before. Who could have loved a teacup as much as Taeyong does?

Johnny may not have met many people throughout his entire existence, but even he knows Taeyong is  _ life _ itself. It’s the way he brings joy to the table when they eat dinner together with the servants, the way he prances in the garden and dances with the flowers, the butterflies and the bees. It’s the way he smiles at every store vendor, even if they weren’t very friendly to begin with. It’s the way that he brings smile even to Johnny’s parents’ faces and he watches as they welcome Taeyong into their home, effortlessly.

Johnny just doesn’t think anyone who spends their day with Taeyong could ever be sad. 

Even Ten loves him, he believes. Whenever Johnny had to head out with his parents for certain meetings he couldn’t skip out on, he trusts Ten to help look after Taeyong should he need the help. Slowly as time passes, Johnny lets Taeyong go out on his own. He couldn’t bear the thought of ever owning Taeyong. A dream that he is, Johnny wants so badly for him to be a  _ person _ , and possessing him only makes him an object. 

It comes back to him that the emotions he feels when he looks at Taeyong isn’t something he hasn’t felt before. He vaguely recalls it but it brings him back to the night he’d completed the stone version of him, standing in the middle of his studio and staring at the sculpted figure, wishing he was real, wishing he could kiss him and then falling asleep realizing he’d fallen in love. 

He has this realization again on a particularly cold night in the midst of November, five months after the first time Taeyong found him at the ball. He lays in his bed alone, staring up at the ceiling and wishing Taeyong would come to him. He’d had Madam Liliana prepare a room for Taeyong sometime ago, one he’d decorated to his own liking, but sometimes Taeyong would spend hours in Johnny’s room, talking, laughing, sleeping.

Tonight doesn’t feel like any other night. He feels like it had been so long since he’d felt so lonely, so dark and empty, void of any light and he couldn’t help but wish Taeyong is here, in his bed with him. He wonders in the darkness of his room if he had wasted too much time getting used to having Taeyong around, wonders if he should have just kissed him months ago, when the opportunities were laid out in front of him over and over again. He wonders if it would ever be too late, if Taeyong would eventually go away and he would lose the one color in his black and white world.

He wonders, too, why it had taken him this long to want something like he wants it with Taeyong. He had spent nearly twenty-six years of his life avoiding anyone that could have been more than just a friend, avoiding all and every idea of a relationship that could possibly go downhill like his parents’ had, and in turn destroy someone else’s entire childhood.

He had prayed he would never turn out like his father, if he could father children in the future. Thinking this, Johnny laughs; if he could pursue anything with Taeyong, the thought of children would be far-fetched. He sighs then, throwing an arm over his eyes and hoping the added darkness could help him sleep. 

As if on cue, the door of his bedroom creaks open and Johnny lifts his arm to look over and see who’d come into his room without knocking, though the answer should have been obvious to him. When he sees Taeyong at his door, Johnny sits up and naturally touches the empty spot next to him, inviting Taeyong over. 

Taeyong smiles gingerly, closing the door before he comes to sit himself on Johnny’s bed. He’s wearing one of his sleep clothes Johnny had bought for him a little while ago, his hair tousled from tossing and turning in bed, like Johnny had been doing. “It got really cold in my room. And I think the lights stopped working, Johnny.”

“That’s okay, sweetheart,” Johnny says softly. He blames his boldness on his state of sleep deprivation but his arm reaches up to let his fingers brush over the hair on Taeyong’s nape. It had gotten just a little long over the time. “Sleep here, with me.”

The boy turns his head to look at him, smiling softly. “You don’t mind?”

Johnny shakes his head, palm sliding down Taeyong’s back gently. “I don’t mind. I’d really like it if you do.”

“Do you want to dream?” Taeyong asks even as he moves to lay next to Johnny when he scoots away to give room to the boy. They lay there facing each other, Taeyong’s eyes soft but hopeful.

“No,” Johnny shakes his head again. “I just want to be here with you.”

Taeyong’s smile widens, moving a little closer. “Can I be honest?”

“Always.”

“I think I like your bed better than mine,” Taeyong confesses, causing Johnny to laugh. 

Unconsciously, he pulls Taeyong even closer to him, close enough that Taeyong’s head rests upon his shoulder, his arm around the boy. “What do you think about sleeping here with me every night?”

“I would love that,” Taeyong mumbles, a clear indication that he’s growing tired. Johnny had noticed over time that Taeyong falls asleep easier when he’s held this way. “Can I ask you another question?”

Johnny hums, fingers toying with Taeyong’s soft black strands. He waits for the boy to speak but when a minute passes and he doesn’t say anything, Johnny speaks up, “What is it, Taeyong?”

“When will you kiss me again? Like you used to when you dreamed before.”

Silence. Johnny mulls this over. It isn’t like he hadn’t thought of kissing Taeyong because he thinks about kissing Taeyong almost every day and every night. What’s really stopping him? Nothing had when he chose to kiss the stone version of him. 

He considers it for a moment but he’s reminded of this dark, empty room, so lacking of life, so unlike Taeyong, that even the idea of kissing him here within this space makes it feel so morally wrong.

“When the sun sets tomorrow,” Johnny says finally, allowing his lips to brush over the boy’s forehead. “I would kiss you then.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


He takes Taeyong to the beach when the new day comes, with a basket of lunch Madam Liliana had prepared for them and there, on the sand, he lays out a blanket for them to sit on. Taeyong seems light on his feet, lighter than usual and Johnny wonders if it was because he had promised him a kiss the night before. If anything, he finds it more endearing than not.

They spend the day talking and painting. Taeyong’s painting skills had gotten tremendously better and he proudly shows it off to Johnny, a scenic view of the sun high up in the sky and the sea beneath it. Taeyong’s skies, as Johnny had noticed, seems to always be the same shade of blue, like the one he had seen the first time Taeyong appeared in his dreams. It dawns on him that Taeyong would remember it as clearly as Johnny had himself.

Johnny, on the other hand, paints a similar image Taeyong had but he adds the silhouette of a dancing man on the sand. When he shows it to Taeyong and tells him that the man is Taeyong dancing amongst the sand that represented Johnny’s tough road, Taeyong had teared up, blinking so quickly but not quick enough to stop the tears from falling down his cheeks.

They let the paintings sit aside, to dry under the sun, and they laid on the blanket with their eyes closed, enjoying the barely there heat. Winter is almost fully here and with it the snow would soon fall. Johnny thinks they should enjoy the sun as much as they could, while they still could. He doesn’t want to kiss Taeyong when it’s dreary and cold and everywhere they’d turn there would only be an endless stretch of snow covered streets. He wants to kiss Taeyong when there is still warmth left, so Taeyong could remember it well. 

“Johnny?” Taeyong breaks the silence, after an almost full hour of saying not a single word.

“Yeah?”   
  


Taeyong sits up, prompting Johnny to do the same. “Do you think I’d ever go away?”

Johnny frowns, confused. “What do you mean?”

“It’s just,” Taeyong sighs, tilting his head back to look up at the sky. “I don’t feel so good lately. Like, I’m slipping away from this place. Maybe I wasn’t meant to live here, not in this reality.”

Panicked, Johnny clears his throat. “That’s not true. You’ve been here for a while, Taeyong. Maybe you’ve caught a cold?”

“Maybe you’ve found your colors and you don’t need me anymore.”

Johnny laughs, finding it ridiculous that Taeyong would think that way. “That’s impossible, Taeyong. You are my color. You’re meant to be here with me.”

Taeyong smiles at him then and his mouth parts to speak but it’s just then that Johnny notices the settling sun. It’s time. It’s the perfect time. This is warm and full of colors and in every way that screams  _ Taeyong _ . No other time would be more fitting. Johnny stops Taeyong from saying anything more, taking his hand to kiss his knuckles and pulling him just a little closer. 

The moment feels almost like a dream. Taeyong’s honey eyes are shining a little too brightly, wide as they stared into Johnny’s. His skin where Johnny touches, just over the swell of his cheekbone, is soft, smooth like the silk he was wearing the night they met at the ball. He lets the pad of his thumb caress over the soft expanse, lets it brush along Taeyong’s lower lip and it’s the first time Johnny had ever kissed anyone but he isn’t nervous or afraid. He feels brave, he feels fantastic, he feels colorful.

When he finally presses his lips to Taeyong’s in a soft kiss for a start, it feels like a burst of colors. Taeyong’s lips are as soft as he remembers them from his dreams, and when his hand reaches up to close over Johnny’s that’s resting upon his cheek, his touch is warm. Johnny kisses him just a little harder, a little bolder as he captures Taeyong’s upper lip between his pair, a little more daring when he prompts Taeyong to part his lips so he could gently, experimentally, run his tongue over the back of his teeth.

It’s easy to be so lost into the kiss. Johnny forgets how to breathe as he continues to kiss Taeyong, taking every second of this moment to taste him, to have him in whole, to keep him here. There is a mix of fear and relief; fear, for if Taeyong disappears then he would lose all meaning and relief, for the fact that now Taeyong is truly, unquestioningly his. 

They part when his lungs scream for air, laughing as he presses his forehead to Taeyong’s, the two of them struggling to breathe. For a moment, Johnny is certain he was deep in slumber and this is only one of his wonderful dreams. Taeyong is here and there are colors all around them, each one a little brighter than he remembered. 

“I think I can stay now,” Taeyong says then, a little breathlessly. “I have a reason to.”

Johnny laughs, nodding his head before he leans to kiss the spot between Taeyong’s brows, and then the scar on the right of his eyes. “Yeah. You’ll always have a reason to.”

They’re silent again for a minute, staring at each other with their lips stretched out into smiles that are beginning to hurt their cheeks. Taeyong’s hand goes up and Johnny feels his fingers gently caress over his cheek. “Does that mean I don’t have to be in your dreams anymore, Johnny?”

“If it’s so horrible…” Johnny teases.

Taeyong’s eyes widen in panic but he’s quick to notice the playful smile on Johnny’s lips. “You know what I mean, Johnny. It’s not always pretty, but I’ll be there whenever you need me.”

“And here, too, I hope?” Johnny whispers, taking Taeyong’s hand in his slightly larger one. “You’ll be here, won’t you? Because I don’t think there would ever be a time that I won’t need you.”

The boy’s smile widens and he nods his head, even leaning in to steal a kiss onto Johnny’s lips. “Where else would I go?”

Later, when they’d packed up all of Johnny’s art supplies and stuffed them into the picnic basket, Johnny reaches over to hold Taeyong’s hand as they make their way back home. He feels like he’s floating, stepping on solid ground yet feeling as though he was dipping his feet into the soft cotton of clouds. There’s a heavy awareness that his future still seems a little bleak but if he looks into it, it’s almost as if he could spot a splash of yellow in each image and he knows it’s Taeyong. 

When they are closer to the mansion Johnny calls home, the house looks almost… alive. Johnny frowns as he stares up at it, at the greenery that surrounds the white bricks, at the flowers decorating the bushes, and he wonders when it had stopped looking so empty. Taeyong looks at him with a questioning tilt of his head, wordlessly asking.

“I’ve never noticed that the house looks a little brighter now,” Johnny explains and upon doing so, Taeyong smiles, emitting a soft laugh as if Johnny’s pointed out the obvious. 

He pulls Johnny with him then, further into the premises of the Seo family’s mansion. “It has been for a little while now, Johnny. You’ve created the colors you wanted it to have. And now we’re here. We’re home.”

There’s a sense of unexplainable joy that roars within his chest, something close to how it had felt when he kissed Taeyong. He is home, finally. He never realized how bad he had wanted it until he feels his eyes water and his chest swell. Six months ago, he never would have thought he’d feel this way. Is this happiness then? He wonders. It has to be.

“Do you love me now?” Taeyong asks playfully, the same cheeky smile on his lips as he pulls Johnny up the steps to the house. 

Johnny knows he’s playing but he means it when he says; “I’d be a fool not to love you.”

And a fool he would be if he doesn’t love the way Taeyong’s cheeks turn into the prettiest shades of pink.


End file.
